By the time she was in her late 70s, wealthy Woodside widow Helen Ferrari’s mind had become clouded by paranoid thoughts and early signs of dementia.

In 2001, a San Mateo County judge ruled she could no longer take care of herself and took the drastic step of placing her finances in the hands of a private conservator who would manage her multimillion-dollar estate and make decisions about her care.

In less than five years, according to court documents, Ferrari’s estate spent more than $700,000 on lawyers and caregivers.

Conservators sold the Mountain Home Road house where she lived for 45 years for $6million to help pay her mounting bills, which included her $12,000-a-month care at Ralston Village in Belmont.

To her daughter, Wendy Ferrari, the conservatorship resulted in a blatant case of elder abuse.

But an independent lawyer chosen by the court to sort out the contentious issues said most of the legal fees could have been avoided if some of her children hadn’t fought the inevitable conservatorship and decisions of the court-appointed conservators every step of the way, racking up massive legal bills.

The case shows just how messy and complicated things can get when the government steps in to protect someone’s interests as they age.

It’s also a scenario that could become all too common as the baby boomer population hurtles into its later years.

High stakes

San Mateo County already has about 1,000 conservatees — people whose financial and/or personal affairs have been placed in the hands of a family member, a private professional, or at last resort the county’s Public Guardian program.

Although that number has held steady in recent years, officials say individual cases have become more complex as the value of people’s estates has grown with the real estate boom.

“It’s clear to me the complexity is up. The size of the estates, the contentiousness is up,” said County Counsel Tom Casey, whose office oversees the county’s Public Guardian program.

Even working-class folks, if they bought their homes decades ago and paid them off, are now worth at least a half-million dollars, he said.

“The stakes are high,” he said.

When money is involved, it increases the chance that heirs will fight over the estate, which can lead the courts to appoint a third-party conservator instead of a family member, officials said.

Because of the growing difficulties with cases, the county’s Public Guardian program has grown from one legal secretary in the early 1970s to a staff of two lawyers who are in court three or four times a week, assisted by paralegals and secretaries.

And that’s just to handle the financial and legal issues that crop up in managing $58 million in assets.

The county also has a team of social workers who look after the person’s care, visiting every conservatee at least once every three months — more often if the person lives independently.

So how does an older person get to the point where he or she need the county to step in?

A drastic step

Most of the time, it starts with a phone call to Adult Protective Services from a neighbor, police officer or other concerned citizen.

Within three days (or four hours if it’s deemed an emergency), the county will send a social worker to visit the person and determine what kind of help is needed.

If the person can’t take care of her or himself, the county will investigate to determine if a conservatorship is warranted.

“It’s the most restrictive thing you can do, so you try to look for alternatives,” said Lisa Mancini, director of San Mateo County Aging and Adult Services.

A lawyer is appointed to represent every potential conservatee and every case is reviewed by a court investigator before the county seeks to have a conservator named by the court.

San Mateo County Judge Rosemary Pfieffer said she grants most conservatorships that come before her because, by that time, cases have been fully vetted to determine that such a drastic step is necessary.

Often, a family member is chosen as conservator, she said.

But if the family members can’t agree or one is seen as putting his personal gain above the interest of the frail person, the court steps in to appoint a third party to make those very personal medical and financial decisions usually reserved for immediate family members.

That third party can be a private conservator or the Public Guardian’s office.

Each conservatorship case is reviewed by the court and its investigator after one year to make sure it is still needed. After that, reviews are done every other year.

For people who don’t have much money saved, often the only way to pay for their care is to sell the home.

When that happens, their belongings usually go into storage until they die.

The Public Guardian’s Office keeps a warehouse in Redwood City that contains the lifetime belongings of people who have gone into nursing homes. Wooden crates and cardboard file boxes contain the remnants of lives once filled with friends and family members.

Dave Dennis, who works in the warehouse, said he remembers one of the first times he had the grim job of cleaning out the home of a recent conservatee and he came across family photographs.

“I was thinking about my own mom at home,” he said.

When things go wrong

Often, family members have complaints about the decisions made by outside conservators.

In the case of Wendy Ferrari of Half Moon Bay, her frequent complaints have resulted in her having to hire a social worker to observe her visits with her mother at Ralston Village, at a cost of $100 to $130 per visit.

Maintaining that her mother never wanted a conservatorship and would rather be in her daughter’s care than in a nursing home, Ferrari has fought the legal proceedings at every turn.

Ferrari said it’s a crime that the conservators charged hundreds of thousands of dollars to represent her mother’s interests.

“How are the elderly people in our society really being protected?” she said.

But to Gregory J. Rubens, a San Carlos attorney appointed to sort out the messy issues, Ferrari has been her own worst enemy in the case.

She has harassed and berated her mother’s caregivers, according to court records. In one three-month period, court records show, the in-home service provider Arcadia had six caregivers quit the case because of the problems.

Rubens sought and won a court restraining order against Ferrari. Rubens told the court he was afraid she would disrupt Helen Ferrari’s living arrangement at Ralston Village.

Many legal expenses that Ferrari’s estate incurred could have been avoided if family members hadn’t waged an aggressive legal battle against the conservatorship and the decisions of the conservators and judges, Rubens argued in court filings.

While her finances were in the hands of a private lawyer, Wendy Ferrari’s two sisters were appointed by the court to make decisions regarding her care. But even they couldn’t agree, according to the court records, which fill three file boxes.

The court denied so many of Ferrari’s legal challenges that last fall she was declared a “vexatious litigant,” meaning she can no longer file legal objections without prior court approval.

After that happened, the estate’s legal expenses dropped drastically.

According to court records, the county requested the conservatorship because of concerns that Helen Ferrari was a victim of elder abuse.

A family attorney had reported unexplained withdraws from her bank accounts and said her children were vying for control over her, records show.

A doctor hired to evaluate Ferrari said paranoia and delusions made her vulnerable to their influence.

Her health was also at risk under the care of Wendy Ferrari, who wasn’t giving her mother doctor-prescribed medications, according to the doctor’s report.

Despite the doctor’s reports, Ferrari said she believes that the conservatorship hastened her mother’s death March 27.

According to court records, Helen Ferrari’s health continued to decline at Ralston Village, although not necessarily because of poor care. She suffered from dementia at times, refused to eat and her weight dropped to 81 pounds last summer.

No inheritance guaranteed

It’s never easy to get involved in family disputes, said Steve Osawa, who oversees a staff of five court investigators.

A retired police officer, Osawa has the often difficult job of making sure all decisions are being made in the best interest of the person being conserved.

Although he isn’t allowed to discuss specific cases, Osawa said it’s not unusual to find dysfunctional families where one sibling is using their elderly parent to punish the other siblings or making decisions based on their own financial gain rather than their parent’s.

As far as the county is concerned, a conservatee’s heirs are not entitled to an inheritance. What’s important is spending the money necessary to make sure the person is well taken care of.

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